Larry’s Diary, Week Two Hundred And Forty-Five

Monday

Good morning and hello from a not very happy cat this morning. I thought that Legohead was supposed to be going off on his holidays and I was going to have a nice peaceful time sleeping on his bed. But typical of the useless, spineless idiot he has so messed up on the civil unrest that he has had to stay home. It rather suits his politics to blame all the troubles on ‘right-wing thugs’. If he had left it at just ‘thugs’ I could have accepted that, but he couldn’t admit that his beloved illegal immigrants or his useless policies have anything to do with it.

When Legohead made his second address to the nation in a couple of days he talked about arresting and finding guilty of everyone involved in the violence. Well, I wonder if the ex-head of Crown prosecutions has made an error which defence lawyers will be jumping on. He has effectively told people that if they are arrested they are guilty and has removed the right to a fair trial. Will he live to regret his attempt look tough?

Ages ago I told you about the plans to completely rebuild Belfast’s Casement Park to be the Northern Ireland stadium that host matches in Euro 28. The original plan was for a 40,000-capacity stadium costing about £70 million but the appointed contractor went bust and no one could be found to take on the contract for that sum. The money was to have been put up jointly by the Northern Ireland Assembly and the GAA from the South. A rethink has taken place, and it is now believed the new stadium will house 34,500 but will cost a more realistic £310 million. But the money is still a problem, and I understand Legohead has promised to find it. Perhaps it will be coming from the cancelled Winter Fuel Allowance. With it still not clear exactly where the money is coming from progress on the stadium seems to be painfully slow, but at least the demolition of the old stadium has started. It is not clear if a construction contractor has been appointed yet but they will have to move quickly as UEFA expect a stadium to have been open a year before the tournament starts and to have hosted a number of test events.

I had to laugh when I heard that there had been a problem over a Coca-Cola float taking part in last Saturday’s Gay Pride event in Brighton. I couldn’t for the life of me work out why gays were against Coca-Cola. But I might have guessed it was all about the left wing and it’s love of Palestine. The new Liebore MP for Brighton Pavilion, Sian Berry, explained that Coca-Cola was an unsuitable sponsor for Gay Pride because they have a factory in Israel built on “occupied land”. I fail to see why gays would ever support anything to do with Palestinian Muslims who throw gays off roofs.

I have never heard of the soft drink ‘Sangs Moray Cup’, perhaps that’s because it was popular in Scottishland where it was made. I understand that the original makers, Sangs, went bust back in 2012 and were bought by Cott Beverages who continued to make the red coloured, fruit-flavoured fizzy drink until it was discontinued in 2017 because of the sugar tax. Now I hear a new company called Deveron Direct say they are going to launch a ‘limited edition’ of the drink, giving no clue as to when and where it will be available. I’m not sure I would want to try it, I don’t usually drink anything else but a little water, as a cat most of my liquid comes from my food.

I see that in Italy, Mount Etna is erupting with some spectacular sights and huge plumes of dust and ash being thrown into the atmosphere. It is also producing thousands of tonnes of CO2, but I haven’t seen Just Stop Oil or Extinction Rebellion out there complaining about it. Etna is said to be putting out 2,000 tonnes of CO2 a day, but I don’t hear JSO and ER moaning.

I see that bus maker Alexander Dennis Limited has revealed a new battery electric bus that it is going to be making to a Transport for London design. The new Enviro400EV For London has a 472Kwh battery that is supposed to be guaranteed for 14 years. The specification says the battery can be fully recharged from a DC supply in three hours at the depot. But it also has a pantograph that can be raised for quick top-ups at special stations at the far end of a route. ADL say that this new vehicle can be used on 99% of TfL routes, I wonder what is wrong with the other 1%?

Tuesday

Good morning everyone, it is a bit drizzly here in Downing Street this morning, but the forecast says ‘sun’ this afternoon, so I better get on with my patrols and jottings while it is grotty out there. I see the Home Office Minister, and lefty, Jess Phillips has said that it was alright for a mob of Muslims to go on the rampage in Birmingham last night and beat up white people. Apparently they were worried that ‘Right Wing thugs’ were coming to their neighbourhood. so what they did was OK.

I was reading a bit on the Internet that was headlined “The National Grid collapses again.” I thought I better read this as I hadn’t seen this elsewhere. It was only when I got some way into the article that I realised that it wasn’t our National Grid that was being discussed but the National Grid of Nigeria. It seems that yesterday much of the nation was without power for the 5th time this year. I know we have occasional problems in the U.K. but nothing that bad. If it happened here heads of the junior management would roll.

I see the media is going crazy about Keely Hodgkinson who won a gold medal at the Olympics last night. Well, I can’t blame them she is a very pretty girl who can stroke me any time she likes. However, I understand that she only has hearing in one ear and must listen out very carefully for the start gun so as not to miss it. Apparently when she was 12 years old she had a benign tumour in her head and it crushed bones in her ear. I hope Legohead follows tradition and invites medal winners to Number 10, I will definitely seek her out.

While talking about the Olympics, a tale reaches me about Paraguayan Luana Alonso who was eliminated in the heats of the women’s 100m butterfly back on 27th July. After the race she announced that at the age of 20 she was retiring from swimming and was going to concentrate on her studies at an American university. However, she decided to stay on in the Paraguay accommodation. But she has now been thrown out of it for “creating an inappropriate atmosphere”. No one has said exactly what she did, but I would love to know.

Last week I wondered when the new channel Sky Sports+ was going to launch on Sky TV, well it was revealed yesterday that it will be on 9th August. It seems Sky have been busy updating their services and apps. If you subscribe to Sky Sports and have Sky Q, Sky Glass or Sky Stream, you can get it on them, but if you have an old satellite box it won’t be available on that. It will also be available on the Sky app on phones and tablets. At the moment Sky are advertising how you will be able to watch any Rugby League match and tennis from every court when they are showing a tournament. They will be showing just about every Championship match that doesn’t kick off at 3:00 pm as well as a lot of Division 2 and 3 matches. Apparently, the new app can carry up to 100 events at once.

Lost among the news of riots yesterday was the arrest of four Just Stop Oil idiots at Manchester Airport. I learn that three women and a man were arrested on suspicion of conspiring to cause a public nuisance. Which makes me guess that the police got to them before they were able to stick themselves to anything or lock on to anything. I think I might think twice about protesting at Manchester Airport, I don’t fancy getting tasered or kicked.

I have been watching the Women’s Skateboarding at the Olympics, but surely it should be called the Girl’s Skateboarding as just about everyone is in their early teens. One of the Chinese was only 11 and our competitor at 16 was an old lady. What surprised me was how many fell off and crashed to the ground, but they all seemed to get up and walk away. I had to chuckle when one little girl from Canada had a lucky feather from her pet duck Richard, tucked in her crash helmet. Mind you, it didn’t do her any good as she fell off on all three of her runs.

Wednesday

It’s quite pleasant here in the street this morning, the sun is out and it’s warmish. The only problem is that Legohead has been in for a couple of meetings instead of being on this holiday. He still seems to think that all the troubles around the country have been caused by the ‘far right’ in general and Tommy Robinson in particular (who is on holiday with his family in Cyprus). I did see that the BBC offered a picture of him on his phone as evidence that he was ‘directing’ the troubles.

I read that Air Canada were forced to cancel a flight from Casablanca (CMN) to Montreal (YUL) because a flight attendant had a meltdown and chucked a passenger off. According to reports, as the plane pushed back to taxi out, a women asked the attendant for a blanket as the air conditioning in the cabin was very cold. For some unknown reason, the attendant started shouting at the woman, who then asked to speak to the captain. Instead, the plane returned to the gate and police were called to take her off the flight. Other passengers then complained, and the attendant is filmed shouting at them and threatening to have them thrown off as well. Instead, everyone got up and walked off the flight causing it to be cancelled. Apparently, Air Canada has refunded the fares.

Glasgow Rangers played qualifying match in the Champions League last night but for once it wasn’t the football that made the headlines. Instead, it was two of the VAR referees, who had to be replaced at the last minute. Rangers were playing the away leg against Dynamo Kyiv in Poland as Kyiv is not deemed to be safe. Rather logically, UEFA appointed Polish officials as the VAR referees, but they had to be replaced at the last minute when Bartosz Frankowski and his backup Tomasz Musial were caught drunkenly stealing a road sign in the early hours of the morning and were arrested by the Polish police. They are both highly experienced officials and were VAR officials at the recent Euros. What happens now is yet to be decided.

In 2023 worldwide coal production hit a new record high, driven by increases in China, India and Indonesia. Most other of the world’s top ten coal-producing nations actually produced less coal with only Mongolia producing more but it actually only produced a tiny amount compared to the likes of China, India and Indonesia. As for coal consumption, both China and India went up hugely, with the only other top coal consumer to have increased consumption being Vietnam who increased their consumption to 1.4% of the world’s. In fact, China has increased consumption to 91.9 exajoules which is over 56% of world consumption. Our coal consumption in the same period was a tiny 180 petajoules (1,000 petajoules equals 1 exajoule).

I keep hearing that 70% of illegal immigrants get asylum when their applications for asylum are processed, but this is just another one of those lies produced by twisting statistics. What it doesn’t tell you is that of the hundreds of thousands in the country illegally only 2% have been processed according to a question answered in a parliamentary committee. Of course, they are the simple cases where it was easy to grant asylum. As the numbers processed increase, the number granted asylum will fall because all the easy cases have already been processed.

Once again car sales were up in July, for the 24th consecutive month. But as I keep having to report, the sale of battery electric vehicles has stalled. Car sales in July 24 were the highest since July 20 when car sales were allowed to resume after the first lock down and there was a lot of pent-up demand. Once again it was business sales that drove the market with 62% of sales going to them where a disproportionate number of EVs are purchased because businesses sales are subsidised by the government. However, car makers are still falling well short of the percentage of EVs mandated by government. So far this year EV sales have only reached 16.8% as opposed to the government target of 22% for the year. But with Liebore changing the Net Zero target to 2030 from 2035 these targets will have to be reduced. These targets are likely to kill the motor industry completely as they could result in a fine of £15,000 for every car sold short of the target.

Very early this morning Airbus announced that Cathay Pacific had ordered 30 x Airbus A330-900neo aircraft and placed options for a further 30. These new aircraft are pencilled in to replace Cathay’s existing A330’s which are getting a little long in the tooth now, while the options will be for fleet expansion. The A330 has been selling rather slowly up until recently, but sales have recently picked up with the introduction of the neo version with more capacity, greater range (they can fly for three hours more) and a 10% increase in fuel efficiency over the previous ceo model. But best of all, no recertification or retraining of crew is required if you are upgrading from the old model. I see that in July Airbus delivered 77 aircraft to 40 customers, taking deliveries to 400 so far this year.

Thursday

Good morning all, a fair nice morning with a pleasant bit of sunshine. I see the police and the lefties are slapping themselves on the back saying how they defeated the ‘far-right thugs’ with their superior intelligence last night and there were no riots. But what happened last night, it seems the Socialists Workers Party, the Trade Unions, et al, rounded up their usual mobs of ‘counter protestors’ who turned up at the list of 30 places circulating on the internet and chanted ‘from the river to the sea’ and ‘free, free, Palestine’ while waving banners produced and handed out by the SWP. I think this was a huge set-up by the left and riots had never been planned.

I’m on immigration watch this morning. Since Legohead arrived in Downing Street, 4,060 illegal immigrants arrived in the U.K. in small boats. So Legohead, who came into power with the promise that he would ‘smash the gangs’, has so far done no such thing a week in. The only thing he has done is stop the Rwanda scheme, which even the Republican of Ireland said was acting as a deterrent, and numerous European nations are now looking at it as a method of dealing with illegal immigrants, although they are looking at countries other than Rwanda. Somehow I suspect ‘Smash the Gangs’ will prove to be just another three-word slogan just like ‘Stop the Boats’ that was so roundly criticised.

Dolce & Gabbana has announced a new perfume for dogs called Fefé and it’s only €99 for a bottle. But surely dogs should just smell of dog? Won’t dogs get a bit confused if when they sniff another dog’s bum it smells of some poofie scent instead of dog. I know wet dogs can get a bit whiffy but surely the answer is to give them a bath, not to drench them in perfume that only masks the smell. Thank goodness we cats don’t smell.

I know some of my diary readers won’t like it, but I feel I need to report that Ukraine appears to have gone on the offensive and launched a ground attack across the border into Mother Russia. The attack was into the Kursk Oblast on Tuesday and Russia reported that it had been crushed that same day. However, on Wednesday reports from Russian commentators on Telegram reported that the Ukrainians had advanced over 13 miles into Russia and there were worries they could be heading for either the town of Kursk, 30 miles into Russia or the Kursk nuclear power station. Late last night the reports changed, and it was said that Ukrainian forces had reached the metering station on the Gazprom natural gas pipeline from Russia to Europe. I wonder if that is true.

Yesterday at the Olympics, Indian female wrestler Vinesh Phoga was thrown out hours before her gold medal fight for being too heavy for the 50 kg class she was fighting in. Despite having her hair cut to try to get her weight under the limit, she was still 100 grams overweight. This is about the weight of a medium size banana. Perhaps she would have been better off having a good sh*t, then cutting her hair.

I hear that Sad Dicks Night Czar, Amy Lamé, has been off sick for the past six weeks but is still presenting her weekend show on BBC Radio 6 Music. American Lamé is officially an employee of the Greater London Authority, earning £132,846 pa. and a previous Mayor of Islington. How is it allowed that someone who is too sick to come to her day job is still able to do her part-time job presenting music on the radio every weekend morning? Surely the GLA must be aware of this woman’s second job and have given its permission for her to take it on. So are they going to investigate her as they would any other employee who was off sick but doing another job?

When the Boeing Starliner space capsule took two NASA astronauts to the international space station back in June they were supposed to be there for around ten days before returning to earth on the same capsule which has remained docked to the ISS. The thing is the astronauts are still there as there are worries about the Starliner’s safety. So, what is the alternative to bring them home? The next SpaceX flight to the ISS is mid-September and it is due to bring home two other astronauts but to let it dock the Boeing capsule will first have to undock. Will it be abandoned in space or will an attempt be made to bring it home unmanned? At the moment, the two NASA astronauts are pencilled in to come home on another SpaceX capsule next February. That’s eight months in space instead of eight days. I wonder if they get paid overtime.

Friday

Well, it was a bit wet yesterday afternoon, and it went on into the evening. When I got up this morning, it was dry but very grey, however, by the time I had eaten my breakfast and done a round of the big office and the back house, the sun was out. I watched a bit of the kite surfing and my, was it scary. Those boards really whiz along at a high speed, you wouldn’t get me on one, I might fall off and get my fur wet!

What is going wrong with fights between London and China? Virgin recently withdrew from Shanghai, its last destination in China, already having withdrawn services from Hong Kong. Now I hear that British Airways is to stop its four days a week service to Beijing when the new timetable starts in September. This has also happened with the Qantas service from Australia to Beijing. Apparently, the services are just not being used and flights are just not carrying enough passengers to make money. The word is that the Chinese are just not returning to tourism at anything like the level before Covid and these airlines are simply reflecting this. In addition to this problem, BA have another. They like other Western Airlines have, for obvious reasons, been banned from flying through Russian airspace.

The Elizabeth Line is proving so popular that people are already looking into ways of it carrying additional passengers. This could basically be done by either running additional trains per hour or adding extra carriages. The current trains operate with nine carriages so could they be extended to ten or eleven cars? The answer is yes but it is not easy. To start with the central core tunnel platforms were all built long enough to take 11 car trains although in some stations the ends of the platform are currently walled off for other reasons and platform edge doors would have to be installed. It is stations outside the central core that are a problem with many of them already struggling to accommodate nine-car trains and some not allowing the doors in the rear two carriages to open. But adding an extra carriage to 80 trains would cost £2 million a carriage, and to do that you would need to add platform work, signalling adjustments and lengthening sidings. So the TfL answer seems to be more trains. At £2 million a carriage, a nine-carriage train comes in at £19 million, or just under, as only eight of the nine cars are powered. The stations are already coping with nine-car trains and the signalling has been designed to deal with more trains per hour than are currently being run.

I have been reading about the growth in cruise holidays and how ships are increasing both in number and size so that the number of people cruising each year is increasing dramatically. Back in 1970 there were only 21 cruise ships in the world, that has increased to 515 today and is increasing every year. Back in 1912 the Titanic was the biggest passenger ship in the world (but remember it was a liner, not a cruise ship) it carried 3,500 people. The current biggest cruise ship is Icon of the Seas and is capable of carrying 7,600 passengers. The article I have been reading predicts that by 2050 cruise ships will be capable of carrying 10,500 passengers. Apparently, there are no technical limits to ships growing this big, the only limit will be the ability of ports to handle them. Small islands in the Caribbean and Mediterranean are already struggling when two of the current big ships arrive in port at the same time.

McDonald’s have just announced that they have experienced a fall in global sales for the first time in four years. To counter these falling sales they have announced that they will be going bigger with their burgers. Their first new big burger will be called the Big Arch and consist of two patties with three slices of processed cheese, crispy onions, slivered onions, pickles, lettuce and a new Big Arch sauce. Well not bad, but if Big Arch sauce is anything like Big Mac sauce I can do without it and I am delighted to see there is no girkin.

I was not in the slightest bit surprised to hear that ‘Hope not Hate’ have admitted that the idea of the ‘far right’ attacking a list of ‘immigrant targets’ was all a hoax dreamt up by them. Well, it resulted in the lefties and the ‘free Palestine’ mobs coming out in force and claiming they have beaten the right. Then a video emerged of Dartford Liebore councillor, Ricky Jones, telling an assorted lefty mob that the anti-immigration protestors: “They are disgusting Nazi fascists, and we need to cut all their throats and get rid of them all.” He then led them in a round of chanting “Free, Free, Palestine”, and drew a round of applause. It did take too long for the Liebore party to expel him, but I hear he has now been arrested. I wonder if he will be charged and if he is what it will be with. The police have been very quick to charge the so-called ‘far right’, it will be interesting to see if they are as quick in charging Ricky Jones or will the story slip down a memory hole.

I have been reading about the history of the Israeli Aircraft Industries ‘Kfir’ (or, in English, ‘Lion Cub’) and how the interesting ground attack fighter came to be produced for the Israeli Air Force. Back in the 1960s the Israelis got on well with the French and operated a fleet of Dassault Mirage IIIC fighters. But they had too short a range for Israel who wanted to use them for ground attack if needed into nearby Arab nations. They asked the French to develop a ground attack version and paid up front for 50 aircraft of what became the Mirage 5, but in 1968 a change of government led to the French trying to get close to Arab nations and banning military sales to Israel. Not to be ones to sit on their hands, Israeli spies soon had acquired not just the design drawings of the plane but the details of the French jet engine and set about building their own version of the plane but with a more powerful locally built version of the General Electric J79 jet engine. The result was the Nesher, soon upgraded to the Kfir which now had the required range, could carry six tons of weapons, reach 58,000 ft and fly at 1,510 mph. The plane is no longer in IAF service but lives on in various Air Forces including Colombia, Ecuador, and Sri Lanka. 

Saturday

Morning all, as I said last Saturday it’s the best working day of the week, as the weekend starts as soon as I have finished my jobs. I thought something was a bit odd in the Terracotta Room this morning, but it was only a big moth, I couldn’t be bothered to chase it. I had to laugh when I heard the Camel was calling out Trump because he doesn’t want to debate her on 18th September. This just happens to be the day the New York judge says is reserved for sentencing. Is she really so thick or is she playing games?

I hear that the Tramp is looking to form a new parliamentary party. Initially, it would include him and the four MPs elected as pro-Palestinian independent MPs. That would make them the same size as the Reform group which is the four Reform MPs and the sole MP of the Traditional Unionist Voice. But I hear the Tramp has also had talks with the seven Liebore MPs suspended for six months for voting with the SNP and against the Liebore whip over the two-child cap. Many of those seven were among the Tramp’s firmest supporters when he was leader of the opposition. But if he did manage to form a group of twelve it would be able to claim substantial funds in Parliamentary Short Money. That would be made up of £22,295.86 for every MP and £44.53p for every 200 votes those MPs polled.

So the BBC has asked Huw Edwards to repay the £200,000 he was paid in wages after he was charged with child pornography offences. I suspect this is a try-on by the BBC who want to take the moral high ground when they know that Edwards has no obligation to repay the money. If the BBC had a leg to stand on it would have stopped paying his wages as soon as he had been charged. However, he wasn’t suspended from his job, he was officially off sick and I guess his employment contract covered him being paid when sick.

Back before Covid, sometimes I’d settle down in the big office in the afternoon and watch the Majorca Files on the BBC. It was obviously made on the cheap, but it was lovely escapism in the sun. But the lockdown killed the show after two series. Now I hear it has been picked up by Amazon Prime and apparently the Americans have spent a lot of money on producing a new series with the intention of launching it on their domestic market where they like quirky British TV murder programmes. I understand it is now available to download, so I hope that someone in the office does so.

Twenty-seven years ago, a freak wave swept 62 shipping containers into the sea from the MV Tokyo Express. One container contained nearly 5,000,000 pieces of Lego and in the intervening time many pieces has been found on the beaches of Devon, Cornwall and the Scilly Islands. But until now not one of the 22,200 dark grey Lego sharks and 29,600 light grey ones had been discovered. That all changed this week when a Brixham fisherman found one in his nets while fishing for monkfish 20 miles out. Strangely, he immediately knew what it was as he had a Lego pirate ship set as a child and it included sharks.

I read that Turkey is having second thoughts about it purchasing S400 air defence missiles and their controllers from Russia. Like with India, deliveries have been much delayed by Russia who need the missile systems for their own forces in the war with Ukraine. While waiting for the missiles to arrive in bulk, Turkey has been developing its own ‘iron dome’ system with domestically made ground-to-air missiles. What S400 missiles that have been delivered, are sat rusting in storage. Apparently, the latest idea is for Turkey to cut its losses and sell its S400 systems to a third party who already has them. This would likely be either Pakistan or India. Without the S400 the way would be cleared for Turkey to renter the American F-35 programme.

It’s not often you see video of a passenger plane spinning out of control and crashing into the ground, but someone in Brazil has just managed to catch the incident. The plane was apparently flying at 17,000 feet when it suddenly went out of control and came spinning into the ground hitting an empty house in a gated community. It may be some time before we find out exactly what killed the 61 people on board the ATR72, but I hear the black box has been recovered so we should find out eventually. However, I do hear that FlightRadar 24 is reporting of a severe icing warning at altitudes of between 12,000 feet and 21,000 feet at the time of the incident.

OK, I’m done for the day and I’m off to sit on the windowsill of the front house in the sun. It’s only warm in the sun at the moment but the forecast is it is going to get warmer as the day goes on and then Sunday could be in the low 30s. Chat to you next week.
 

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